Social Media Morning 6/9/08
June 10, 2008
Todays show is all about protecting your brand online. You can find me online at the following locations:
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Starbucks/AT&T Not So Free Wi-Fi
June 3, 2008
This week Starbucks will make the transition to AT&T as their in-store wi-fi provider. As part of the deal they are announcing free wi-fi with the purchase of a $5 Starbucks card. You must use your card at least once a month to keep the deal going. So, for a cup of coffee a month, you have wi-fi at Starbucks. The one hitch in the deal is that the access is for two hours a day only and those hours must be consecutive. That means you can come in the morning and get some use but if you come back in the afternoon, no dice.
I don’t understand why they need to put these kind of restrictions on the service. My other favorite coffee shop, It’s A Grind, provides free open access, no questions asked. And when I am there, I always buy a coffee. The Starbucks program reeks of corporate think. Let’s look at all the risks and mitigate them. God forbid we trust our customers because given the chance they’ll rip us off. 98% of Starbucks customers will buy a coffee while there, so there’s no real reason to require it with the card and how many will sit there all day and suck access? Not many. And those that do are going to be thirsty and hungry and will most likely buy more stuff. I would rather see Starbucks and AT&T trust customers to begin with and apply restrictions in the future if real problems surface. But like the music and film industries, corporate America still feels the need to control their customers and has a basic lack of trust for them. This, of course, runs completely contrary to the spirit of the Internet and the new world of business online. Maybe, just maybe if you treat your customers with respect they will give you back the same.
Flight To Open Source
June 3, 2008
Weather it’s attributable to a fear of Google Open Social or increasingly savvy executives there is a real movement to open up social network platforms. Facebook has been the hottest network of late but is also once of the most closed and restricted. Not anymore as Facebook announces an open platform. Not to be outdone, Myspace also has plans to open it’s code. What the open platforms will do is enable outside developers to create extensions and addons to these services. New features will not be solely at the mercy of the original developer.
Within five years it’s going to be hard to run any kind of web service or application that is not open source, or at least provide a strong set of open API’s. This is part of the new paradigm of Internet business. Open Source has been around for years, but only now it is really starting to take hold. This is partly why Google has the strategic advantage over Microsoft as we move into the future. Open Source is built into the Google DNA. Microsoft has been built on the concept of proprietary systems and control. Buying Yahoo makes sense for Microsoft not just for their search advertising program, but for the Yahoo culture and philosophy. Yahoo also has Open Source built in. If Microsoft would allow some of that to seep in, it could benefit them emencly.